Another Amazing New Brook Trout Stream

The past two years have been an amazing couple of years for finding great new brook trout streams, ones that nobody has told me about, ones that aren't in the angler's guide. Some of the brookie streams I've found don't even have names. But there's one piece of water I have been eyeing up for a couple of years now, and I decided after school today that I was going to try to find a way through the woods to this stream.

As it turns out it was even more difficult than I expected. There were only a couple of trails and the undergrowth was thick and composed almost entirely out of thorn bushes. But I eventually crawled, climbed, jumped, and bled my way to the stream. It was a perfect, classic brook trout stream. From my first couple of looks I expected it to be loaded with 3 to 5 inch brook trout. The first thing I do when I fish a new stream is quickly walk a long stretch to spook fish. When I did that this evening I spooked hundreds of brook trout, but they were not 3 to 5 inchers... they were 6 to 12 inchers! There was at least one big fish in every pool and glide, and often two or three. When I spotted a perfect undercut bend pool I decided it would be the first place I would catch a fish. It was. I put the Ausable Ugly past the big boulder and It got eaten. I set the hook and briefly battled the fish. What I landed was an incredibly stunning specimen, a chunky male with kype, blue in the mouth, hump on the back, and spots that could make other brookies jealous. 

As I continued downstream I saw more big brook trout. Then I came to a classic spot. The current hit a big rock, forming a deep pocket in front of it with a ripple on the surface, and a glide going around the rock. I made my cast into the glide, than twitched the Ugly into the pocket. The second cast got eaten. The third I hooked up, and a huge brook trout splashed at the surface. A few more missed takes and it gave up on the Ugly. I changed to a fly I had with me that is just not in my brook trout stream arsenal: a size 6 2x long olive Woolly Bugger. The big fish slammed it on the first cast. I missed again and this time it didn't come back at all. But I do know where it lives know, and better yet I know a stream with brookies big enough and aggressive enough to go after a sizable streamer.